


you pull me like the moon pulls on the tide

by elizajane



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Femslash, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Low-Vision Character, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Sharing a Bed, Visions, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Ghera is certain the songs are the work of a single bard.And that all of the songs are meant for her.[rating will eventually be Explicit]
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Ghera / Jaskia (Wiedźmin | The Witcher)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I say to myself "Gosh, I haven't seen any Geralt/Jaskier femslash and wouldn't that be interesting ..." 
> 
> So. 
> 
> I rarely do this, but right now my life needs the sweetness that is some dedicated fic-writing time at the end of thework day. And I've been struggling to even get sentences down because *gestures at the general world situation* so I know putting things through a revision process right now will just be a puddle of tears. 
> 
> I've got about ~8k of a rough draft and my goal is to post chapters on Tuesdays, until the story spools itself out. There's one bed, what do! and kissing and orgasms and a golem which is about as much of a plot as we get between orgasms and kissing. It's mostly soft sexytimes because *gestures to world situation again* and someone recently told me they liked the way I used "kiss" as a verb so I'm going with that.
> 
> Please heed the WIP tag if that's a thing you avoid. I promise I won't leave them in an unhappy place, but that's about all I can promise at this moment in time.

Ghera first hears the bard’s songs played with no great skill around campfires, sung with little care by workers in fields she and Roach pass by, shared with tipsy good cheer in village taverns where the barkeep paid in ale rather than coin. Even so, the music snags at her attention -- the surprise of an interval, the sweet ache of an unexpected yet somehow perfect-for-its-moment chord. The compositions are uneven, it’s true. The lyrics are poetic, but unremarkable. Yet in each composition there is ... _something_. Something that catches and holds her attention, such that Ghera -- no musician herself -- finds herself humming snatches of music as she walks before Roach along narrow mountain paths, or recalling a particular musical phrase with anticipatory pleasure the next time she hears the opening bars of a certain song at another inn, in another town, in the hands of another local musician.

Ghera would not have survived this long, in her vocation as a witcher, if she weren’t observant. If she didn’t notice patterns, pay attention to detail. Didn’t know how to track a creature patiently, across multiple kinds of terrain, by the signs it left in passing. The behavior of humans is more difficult to understand than the behavior of most of the creatures Ghera protects humans from … but after more than a season of listening, of noticing, of paying attention to detail, Ghera’s instincts as a witcher draw her toward an improbable conclusion: that the songs Ghera _notices_ draw her attention for a reason. That they’re all the work of a single bard.

And all of the songs are meant for _her_.

The problem with that conclusion is that it cannot possibly be true. Ghera has never had a bard. She would know. It’s not the sort of thing you forget, having your own bard. Everyone knew that witchers with bards _earned_ their service and … whatever else it was that witchers and their bards chose to share (there had always been rumors; Ghera had never been close enough to her fellow witchers to learn the truth behind them). And Ghera hadn’t earned the service of a bard. Nor was a bard travelling with her now. So there was no reason for a bard to be writing songs about Ghera -- _for_ Ghera.

And yet that was exactly what, bafflingly, a bard -- someone, somewhere -- had chosen to do.

It’s a ballad about her recent victory over a vengeful phouka that finally convinces Ghera she isn’t simply spinning fanciful, self-indulgent tales to soothe herself to sleep at night. There are _details_ : the witcher’s notable height, her moon-white hair, the phouka’s violet eyes. The battleground, the stages of the hunt, the final kill all so clearly evoked that Ghera’s skin prickles and the newly-healed scar on her thigh stings with the memory. The lyrics are maudlin, a touch over-dramatic, but that too is characteristic of the bard -- _her_ bard, Ghera’s treacherous mind offers up, with a rush of longing that’s a physical ache in her chest -- and only confirm the composition as one by the same hand as all the others.

She fights the urge to slip away from the crowd at the harvest festival as she listens to the final refrain, tugging the hood of her cloak further forward to keep her white braids out of sight. Even so, her cheeks burn as they do whenever a town mayor or local lord insists she say a few words upon accepting payment for her latest contract successfully fulfilled. She feels unpleasantly visible and abruptly no longer interested remaining in this village for the promised evening feast. She’ll leave before nightfall, but there's one thing she needs to do before moving on. So she downs the dregs of her cider and passes the tankard back to a passing serving girl with enough coin to make the girl blush and stammer in thanks -- then makes her way to the edge of the raised platform where the bard is taking a rest between songs, juggling a babe at her breast and finishing a hasty meal.

"The song you just sang," Ghera says, low, dropping a few more coins in the instrument case at the woman's feet, clearly set out for such a purpose.

" 'The Witcher Moon'?" And already Ghera has slightly more of a trail along which to hunt than she had before the conversation started.

" 'The Witcher Moon,' " she echoes. "Do you know the composer?"

"Personally?" The musician raises an eyebrow as she shifts the child in her arm and reaches for another piece of roasted potato. "Do I look like someone who travels to Ardonia?"

 _Ardonne_. The border was a month's journey by the sort of coach on which a woman with patched skirts and a bairn could afford passage, the capital city another fortnight. Ghera drops another coin into the case. "I meant, might I have a name, m'lady?"

"And where've you been, then, not to have heard of Bard Jaskia before now?"

 _Bard Jaskia_. "I am not often at gatherings such as this," Ghera gestures at the boisterous humans around them. "I admit my own ignorance. But the song was ... striking."

"Bard Jaskia's compositions often are," the bard tips her head in acknowledgment. "Little is known about her background or training. She is said to have arrived in Ardonia several years ago with little but her harp, her raven, and her songs."

"I thank you for the information," Ghera says, truthfully. She now has a name and destination. "I will not keep you from your meal any longer." She drops a final coin in the case and walks away toward the village stables to collect Roach. They will be on the road toward Ardonne before the sun drops below the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, one chapter per week is a more realistic schedule for me while writing in plague mode. *headdesk*

The city of Ardonia is a bustling port, the seat of Ardonne’s parliamentary government, and situated far away from the sparsely-settled, oft-disputed borderlands where Ghera's contracts typically take her. Ardonia employs its own witchers on government payrolls -- a modest but respectable living. Ghera could have put her mark to one of half a dozen similar agreements over the years. She never has -- and her purse is leaner for it. Still. She knows herself well enough, seasoned as she is, to have a fair idea how she would chafe at taking orders. And there will be no more living in a barracks; her years as a novice are firmly behind her. She prefers the company of Roach to the company of most other sentient beings anyway -- certainly to the company of most humans. And nights spent wrapped in a blanket beside the fading embers of a well-laid campfire to the trapped, restless feeling shared sleeping quarters inevitably brings. It has been several decades since Ghera has been as far south as Ardonne. But in the weeks following the harvest festival in Thul, at which Ghera first heard ‘The Witcher Moon,’ she works her way toward the border contract by contract -- taking on even small tasks she would normally have dismissed as not worth the effort, time, or coin they paid. She hews closer to settlements where Bard Jaskia's songs might be played, sleeping at inns rather than along the roadside, and sitting up late into the evening at the back of the common room. She listens to the gossip, and to the music, as she drinks ale and tries not to think about _why_.

Ghera has no plan beyond the hunt. No idea of what she might do once she meets the musician who has written her life into songs. _How?_ She wants to ask. How did Bard Jaskia know such details? _Why?_ Why had the bard chosen her -- _Ghera_ \-- of all witchers? Ghera knows her own strengths and shortcomings -- has to, in order to survive as she has -- and feels that she is better than some and not as good as others. She has scars attesting to that. She’s earned the respect of witchers she could count on a single hand over the years; kept company for a season three among them before parting ways. She has never courted the particular attention of a human -- nor, to her knowledge, has any human before now taken more than a passing evening’s interest in her.

And those who _have_ expressed an evening’s interest … Ghera’s always turned them down. Humans, even tipsy ones, struggled to look her square in the eye. She could scent how the ones drunk enough to try for a grope were doing so for the thrill of having done it -- not because they had any desire for _her_. Sometimes, in the early years, she would lie awake beneath the stars (long after having left the public house behind her) and wonder what stories they invented: _Aye, mate, d’ye know a witcher wench she has two nipples on her tits? I swear I felt ‘em!_ Or: _Weren’t no quim between ‘er thighs, hand t’gods! Like me mum says -- those lady witchers ain’t natural._

She also used to wonder how they explained away the bruises she left on their wrists -- usually well before those wandering hands got anywhere close to between her thighs.

Humans like that don’t keep Ghera awake any longer. They don’t deserve her thoughts, so she doesn’t give them more attention than it takes to swat them away like mosquitoes in a swamp at the height of midsummer.

But not all humans are like those drunken fools, Ghera knows. And not all humans are afraid of witchers. As late autumn turns to early winter -- as the days grow shorter and the nights colder -- Ghera sits in the dark corners of crowded wayside inns, where travelers gather inside by warm fires to fill their bellies with hot stew and fresh bread, and listens to the gossip of the road. Ghera listens for the now-familiar notes of Bard Jaskia’s songs and thinks of what she knows of bards who travel with witchers, serving as companions and chroniclers.

Ghera has met several such pairs in recent years, although the practice has never been widespread -- it’s a rare human willing to throw their lot in with a witcher, and every pair she’s crossed paths with in her travels has been … unique. You never could predict how a bard and witcher would interact with one another, or the world around them, based on other pairs you’d worked with or otherwise known. It was a bond that Ghera, singular for nearly a century, found both uncomfortable and seductive to witness: a witcher and a human, so accustomed to one another they held conversations in a series of small, silent touches or completed tasks such as setting up camp for the night without a single word exchanged. They told stories in traded sentences, and looked for one another when the other was even the slightest bit late to return. Their shared touches might make Ghera ache with longing, but the shadows that crossed their faces when one half of the pair was unaccounted for was terrifying in its vulnerability. Even thinking of it now, as she walks through a misting rain from one village to the next, she closes her eyes against the need to protect them from any who would wish them harm.

She is afraid for them. And longs to count herself among them. But has always been certain she never will. Yet now, as she walks through the rain, each step Ghera takes is one step closer to Ardonia and the possibility that Bard Jaskia is somehow, impossibly, looking out toward the road as if waiting for her return.

Ghera has been unable to stop imagining it: the musician seated at an open window. A raven, the bard at the festival had said, perhaps on her shoulder or on a nearby perch. A harp, or a lute. Strong hands on the strings, her body intent to her work even as her gaze falls on the winding road below. It’s fanciful, Ghera knows, and feels foolish for it -- but still she continues moving forward. Moving _closer_.

* * *

Winter deepens, and Ghera presses southward. After tracking down and forcibly relocating a rusalka who had been systematically terrorizing several settlements along her chosen river, Ghera has enough in her purse to move into the more temperate, rolling hills along the northern border of Ardonne. Within ten leagues of the border she's hired to root out a colony of 'ghasts that are souring the wine grapes of an entire valley. It's messy, wearying work, if not particularly dangerous, and she's more than usually grateful when the local magistrate offers her a private room at the local inn with meals to be paid from town coffers. The maid fills a copper bath before the fire with steaming water scented with lavender and Ghera soaks the pitchy spit of irritable 'ghasts from her hair and scrubs her skin with rough but serviceable soap and cloth until every scar flares pink.

Once dry, she hesitates. The tavern below had been bustling when she had skirted its edges at last light, following the innkeeper toward the stairs at the back that led to the lodging-rooms above. Ghera knows she could leverage the gratitude of the townsfolk to request a private meal, the innkeeper would not deny her the request, but she would feel guilty making extra work for the serving girls on a busy night. So with a sigh she crosses the room to her traveling packs, left where the stable boy had dropped them, and looks for something serviceable to wear. Her skirts are clean enough, not having been worn for a fortnight, and she pulls on a linen shift followed by a brown wool tunic, embroidered with the mark of her guild, and a leather belt to match. Understated, but signifying her status; best to remind everyone on their third pint or more she’s a witcher. The short knife visible at her waist serves a similar purpose (the blade up her left sleeve the more practical weapon). She coils her still-damp hair into a knot at the base of her neck and steps out into the hall.

The tavern has hired a bard for the evening, Ghera realizes, making her way back down to the dining room. She pauses on the privacy of the stair realizing the singer is on the sixth of twenty verses in the epic ballad that recounts one of Ghera's first battles with a jotun. It had nearly been her last and there's a long pucker of scar tissue down one side of her neck to prove it. She presses a palm to the unsightly knot and wishes fleetingly that she had chosen one of the tunics with a high collar, or worn her hair down. People always stare, and there is nothing for her to say. _It was the life I was pledged to._ A child, one too many mouths to feed, a choice much better than many others her parents might have made. It is a century ago now. Longer. A span of years most humans struggle to conceptualize.

She closes her eyes at the fall -- that impossible interval between high and low -- that Ghera has come to anticipate each time she hears the ballad played. The reach and pause and drop feels impossibly sweet on the lips of this particular bard, as if her mouth contained every possibility of each note woven in and over, around, and through the space between the words. Her fingers on the harp strings are sure, pulling more from the melody and harmony in this particular composition than Ghera has heard before in other taverns, in other towns. The musician plays as if she and the song are one and the same, Ghera thinks, like those moments when her sword feels like an extension of her own body.

During the bridge between verses, Ghera steps down into the main room and makes her way to the bar to ask for a tankard of beer before sitting down. She seeks out the bard with her eyes as she moves: a brown-haired, light-skinned woman sitting with her lap harp on a small raised platform. The woman holds herself with confidence, absorbed in her song, hands moving deftly across the strings.

"Witcher," the barkeep says, with a nod in greeting. "Our thanks for thy service today."

"Of course," Ghera says.

"Might I offer thee a drink?"

"Your darkest stout, please," Ghera says. "And plate of whatever you've on in the back. With my thanks." Her stomach rumbles at the reminder that there hasn't been much by way of food today. The potions keep her appetite at bay but she'll start to tremble with it if she doesn't eat soon. "Two plates, actually. And a loaf of bread?"

"I see you've noticed we've another guest among us tonight, witcher," the barkeep says upon his return with the drink. He nods toward the bard. "Not often we have a bard from Ardonia this far north."

Ghera's stout sloshes in the tankard and she casts another look across the room toward the bard. "Ardonia?"

"Aye." The barkeep affirms. "Bard Jaskia, that is. Hardly thought we'd ever get the likes of her t'play in here. But then, never thought we'd have the Moon Witcher here in Whist-upon-Rhine either did I?" He winks. "Might be a coincidence. If you believe in coincidences. Then again..." With an eloquent shrug, he picks up his towel and turns away toward a guest who's just come in the front door, leaving Ghera with her drink and scattered wits.


	3. Chapter 3

Ghera retreats.

It's a tactical withdrawal, she tells herself. She hasn’t fled in outright panic since … likely since before Bard Jaskia’s birth. Therefore the trembling in her limbs must be fatigue, not fear, and the awareness she has of the . She sinks down onto one of the rough-hewn stools at a table in the shadows beyond the common hearth. As far away from the bard as the room allows while still giving Ghera the chance to watch and listen and ... be _near_. To the bard. Who _isn’t_ hers, and yet is here. Bard Jaskia, who had no reason to know Ghera would be in this particular town, at this particular inn, and yet here she sits waiting patiently, bent to her work, as if confident that Ghera will know this is where to find her and how, once found, to make an approach.

 _If you believe in coincidences_.

Ghera manages one swallow from the thick, rich stout and settles the tankard on the worn, wiped-clean table top. She places shaking hands flat against the oak and refuses to count her own rapid heartbeats. Instead, she takes a deep breath in, blinking her eyes closed, and then lets it out, feeling her lungs expand and contract with the necessity of air. She may have retreated to the shadows, but Jaskia’s music weaves through the boisterous room, nevertheless, and finds her there with the reassuring lilt of a particular, familiar phrase -- one of Ghera’s favorites; one of the first of Jaskia’s she ever took and tucked away. She has no right to the shivering want that Jaskia’s melody kindles as it slides along her skin, against the shell of her ear, but she shivers nonetheless.

One of the serving girls brings food as Jaskia slides from one song to the next and though Ghera can no longer tell where one type of hunger begins and another ends she has been a witcher long enough to eat when food is put before her and tears off a piece of warm bread to soak up the stew. She’s had a long day’s work and the potions she took that morning have long since been sweated out, the clawing fatigue they leave in their wake after the sun drops below the horizon. And the food is something to occupy her hands while she focuses the whole of her attention on Jaskia at the front of the room.

She wouldn't have been able to say, if asked before now, what she imagined Bard Jaskia to look like, how her presence would change a room. But now that she has seen her, felt her, _this_ is the only way her bard could ever be: intent upon her music, aware of her audience but not playing _for_ them. Her clothing is simple, but fine, communicating status through its very lack of ostentation. Her chestnut hair in one long plait, woven through with an ochre ribbon to match her bodice and overskirt, sits like a crown on her head, secured well away from her ever-moving fingers. Even seated, she holds herself like a trained warrior, energy expended where necessary and her other muscles at rest. Ghera can read exertion in her movements but only, she thinks, because she has been trained to read her opponents in combat. The bard could likely play all evening without her audience of pleasantly inebriated townsfolk any the wiser about how much effort she expended.

Ghera’s mouth is dry and she splays her palm against the table top beside her empty tankard, looking down at the tendons moving beneath the skin, the blue tracery of blood vessels, the scarred knuckles. Working hands, as are the bard’s. She can’t see every detail from where she sat, and Jaskia’s hands are moving quickly up and down the fretwork and across the strings as she plays, but she knows from the movements Jaskia hands are strong. And knows that, like a swordswoman, she will have calluses. Ghera doesn’t have a right to imagine how Jaskia’s hands would feel upon her skin, but she imagines it all the same.

"More for your cup, Witcher, ma'am?" the serving girl making the rounds asks with the pitcher in her hand. “Himself says it’s on the house.”

Ghera pushes her tankard forward for more with a nod. "The bard. She arrived today?"

"Aye, ma'am. Witcher. Sir?" The poor girl couldn't be more than thirteen summers, Ghera thinks.

"It's Ghera," she says, gently. "Witcher Ghera, or Sister Ghera." Although few remembered the Sisterhoods. "But most use Witcher."

"Witcher Ghera, then," the girl bobs a curtsey and Ghera slips a coin into her apron pocket.

"Did she arrive alone? The bard?" She asks the girl.

"Oh, aye, just her -- and the raven, that is."

As if invoked by the serving girl's words, there's a flutter from across the room and a raven drops from the rafters above where Bard Jaskia is playing and settles on the back of her chair with a loud _kkraak_ and a ruffle of feathers. Several patrons jump in their seats, and there's a shift and murmur among those closest to where Jaskia plays. The musician herself rocks, just slightly, tipping her head to the side just enough to allow the bird to rub its beak affectionately along her braided hair as she continues to play. The tune she's playing now is a popular folk melody, on strings alone, perhaps allowing her voice a rest. The bird shuffles a step to one side, then the other, and Ghera can see Jaskia speaking to it, low, lips and throat moving almost imperceptibly; inaudible at this distance, above the diners and the music, even to witchers’ ears.

Ghera drags her gaze away and looks down at her plate, realizing the bowl empty and half of her loaf of bread is gone. Another girl passes by and wordlessly takes the empty bowl from the table, replacing it with a second serving, and Ghera begins methodically working her way through that as well. She can feel the aches and stings that will demand a dose of healing potion before bed and another in the morning. But only the very young and very stupid Witchers assume potions are the solution; they generally don't survive as long as Ghera has.

* * *

"My witcher."

Ghera looks up, a piece of bread heavy with broth halfway to her mouth, to find her bard standing before her. For a moment she cannot breathe or think past the honey-mead warmth of the words _my witcher_ spoken in the deep, rich alto of a trained singer who could reach across the breadth of a concert hall but who had spoken those words for Ghera alone. In a possessive tone that could have been plucked straight from Ghera’s own mind when she has thought of the woman standing before her -- _my bard_ \-- any one of the countless of times she has now thought those words and felt shame for doing so. 

_My witcher_.

Her mouth is open to respond -- _my bard my bard my bard_ \-- but her throat closes against the words that feel like the only possible response and impossible to say to the human standing before her in this crowded tavern. The human who seems suddenly diminutive and -- Ghera can scent underneath all of the roiling odors in the room -- nervous. Uncertain. With her lute and her songs, the bard had commanded the room. Here, she stands tall but as if braced for unwelcome. The raven, on a leather gauntlet upon her arm, studies Ghera out of one sharp eye, then then the other. Ghera drops her eyes to the bird, then raises them again to Jaskia’s face aware that in the first flush of being this close she has taken in _Jaskia_ as a presence without actually meeting the woman’s gaze.

Jaskia, like the bird on her arm, has her head turned at a slight angle and it takes Ghera the space of another breath -- she finally remembers to lower the bread in her hand bread back to the bowl -- to realize that Jaskia is studying her through the milky iris of a partly-cloudy eye. The other eye is white as Ghera’s hair.

“I’m --” Ghera shakes her head, the possible words tangled in her throat. _I’m not. I am. I’m sorry._ “The shadows,” is what she finally offers, glancing around. The bard has made her way across the crowded room unaccompanied but if her eyesight troubles her the flickering firelight and deep shadows into which Ghera had retreated would be unkind. Ghera should ask one of the serving girls for a lamp, something to set upon the table, so that Jaskia will not strain to see. Though perhaps too strong a light would be painful. She shakes her head again. Jaskia and the raven are still regarding her.

 _My witcher_.

"You might ask me to sit," Jaskia suggests, after a slight pause, with a twitch of her lips that might be a smile. The fact that Ghera hasn’t told her to leave must give her courage, for she appropriates a nearby chair and sits without waiting for the suggested invitation. The table is small and when she settles onto the stool her ochre skirts brush against Ghera’s calf and her left ankle, in a soft leather boot, brushes (perhaps accidentally) and then settles (not at all accidentally) against Ghera’s right. In response, Ghera slides a hand over Jaskia’s knee, in a gentling touch that she might have used with a nervous Roach or to calm herself with Roach’s bulk as they walk through a crowded marketplace. It’s a gesture that comes so naturally that she’s pulled back before realizing what she’s done and freezes, hand extended toward her beer.

“You should know the innkeeper was tripping over herself to sing your praises, earlier, not that I needed them sung, you understand.” Jaskia says, in what may or may not be a response to the touch. She shifts her leg closer, so that the inside of her calf is up against the outside of Ghera’s. It should feel forward; Ghera doesn’t usually like unfamiliar bodies pressed up against her own. But Jaskia doesn’t feel unfamiliar, or forward. “But it's always nice to receive independent confirmation. Jericho and I sometimes get carried away -- don't we, Jericho? --" here she paused to reach up and give the raven's beak an affectionate rub "-- and I've been accused of being brash, you see. Unsubtle. But it's hard not to be when --"

"You should eat," Ghera says, as one of the serving girls maneuvers by with a pitcher and Ghera can catch her eye, tipping her head wordlessly in the language of all taverns: _Food and drink for my companion_.

"Should I?" Jaskia sounds delighted. "With you? I'd love to. I haven’t eaten since midday. I never do, before a performance. before. And I knew -- or hoped, let's say I hoped -- you'd be here today which made it even more --" Jericho _krawkkes_ and ruffles their feathers. "Yes, well, I know _you_ ate, darling," Jaskia says rubbing Jericho's beak again.

The serving girl returns with two steaming bowls, one two replace Ghera’s empty one, a loaf of bread, and a light ale that must be Jaskia’s preference, setting them down with practiced ease. Ghera can think about little else but the warmth of the bard's leg against her own under the table and doesn't know what to do with any of her limbs. She reaches for the bread to distract herself.

"Did you … _know_ I would be here?" She finally asks, pulling that single question from the tangle of questions crowding to be let out as one of immediate and concrete importance.

Jaskia's blush is a lovely sight, Ghera thinks, deepening the brown of her cheeks. "Hoped," she admits finally. " _Hoped_ you would be here. I've been -- I've been waiting for you to come close enough to Ardonia that I might travel out to meet you and offer myself."

Ghera _does not_ spit out her beer. "Offer yourself."

Jaskia's chin is defiant. "As your bard."

"I don't --" Ghera begins, though her mind presents no truthful way of ending that sentence. _I don't want a bard_ is an outright lie given she, confusingly but undeniably, wants the woman before her very much. _I don’t know what to do with a bard_ is perhaps closer to the truth but Ghera can already tell such a protest would be waved away and knows she would be glad of it.

Jaskia had said: _My witcher._

"I know that's not traditionally how these things are done," Jaskia continues when Ghera doesn't. "But does anyone do things in the traditional ways anymore? I don't have a guild mistress to speak on my behalf and is your sisterhouse even still standing? I'd have sent word before now, but hadn't the faintest idea to whom I might direct it and anyway I was worried if all you had was a letter ..."

Ghera struggles to follow this torrent of words. "You wish to travel with me. As my bard." 

"Yes."

"I don't --"

Jericho shuffles down from Jaskia's shoulder and struts across the table to study Ghera, then with another _krakk_ struts back across to Jaskia. Bard and raven consider Ghera with what she would swear are twin looks of amusement. She frowns. Jericho croaks. Jaskia swallows a mouthful of ale.

"How did you know that the phouka had violet eyes?" is the question that Ghera finally manages to push out past all of the others.

"Ah." Jaskia sets down her tankard with a sigh. "You see, I had really hoped we might -- would it be possible for us to travel together for some time, get to know one another, before I answer that question?"

"No," Ghera says, meaning to sound forbidding but rather certain it comes out more like a plea.

Both Jaskia and Jericho glare at Ghera, extremely effectively, out of one eye each. Ghera waits out the silence, which isn't difficult because she's used to silence and also because -- as she predicted -- the bard isn't one to let silence last long. If they are to travel together Ghera will have that to adjust to. It doesn’t seem a burden. _Already, you grow used to the sound of her voice,_ she thinks with a flush, putting a piece of roast parsnip into her mouth.

"I have visions," Jaskia says, hands plucking at the edge of the table as if they're seeking out the strings of her lute. "Since childhood, as soon as my eyesight began to diminish --" she gestures to her face. "Perhaps _because_ my eyesight began to diminish. Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, I traded one kind of sight for another? I have wondered. None of the healers or mages my parents consulted could say."

"And you saw me slay the phouka in a vision?"

Jaskia's expression does something complicated and evasive. "...yes."

Ghera considers this. "Before, during, or after it happened?"

Jaskia's hands flutter anxiously. "During. I think. To my knowledge, I have never engaged in prophecy, and I was tested extensively you understand. To be a prophetess is not ... a comfortable calling. Now _that_ would have been awkward for a burgermeister's daughter. Imagine." Ghera is fascinated with the way Jaskia's hands shape stories in the air. She feels as though she _can_ imagine it, even though the world of a burgermeister's daughter could not be further from her own long-distant childhood. "During, or after? My visions often come during sleep, as dreams, but not all of your -- not everything the visions show me happen at night."

Ghera thinks about the songs, her songs, the songs Jaskia has written about her, for her, _to_ her. She thinks Jaskia never sent a letter inked on paper, it is true, but that this doesn't mean she failed to send a message in advance of her arrival.

"My life is not a life fit for a burgermeister's daughter, Bard Jaskia," Ghera says to the bread in her hands. The bard's skirts are finely woven, the bodice of her dress embroidered with poppies and edelweiss. She will be used to the luxuries of city life, not living at the mercy of each change in the weather, not walking from dawn until dusk on narrow mountain paths, not sleeping in the same clothes that you've just walked those paths in, and then rising the next morning to walk in them again.

"Well _that's_ certainly a relief," Jaskia says dryly. "Since I haven't been a respectable burgermeister's daughter for over twenty years. Have I, Jericho?" Jericho _krraks_ in agreement, stretching and resettling their feathers before making another journey across the table and back

Ghera is trying not to pay attention to the ache that tells her how much she wants to say yes to this proposition. The suddenness of it all is unnerving. She hadn't allowed herself to imagine this meeting, which she had assumed would be in Ardonia, and instead has been sprung upon her here, when she's half asleep from the day's exertions, with no time to think through an approach or response. She has been out-maneuvered. She had imagined she was the one tracking down her bard when, instead, her bard has set a trap for her and lured her neatly inside.

"I travel by foot," Ghera says. "At times on horseback. Would you be prepared to do the same?"

"Is that your way of asking of I can keep up with you, my witcher?" And Ghera absolutely is not thinking about how good it feels to be spoken of as someone's. As _this_ someone's. Jaskia's eyebrow rises. "I assure you, Jericho is not here as an affectation. They navigate for me when I cannot, in a world that is -- these days -- one composed of light and shadow, splashes of color." Her hands were dancing again, sketching Ghera's form in the air above the table between them. "I knew you by your presence across this room, but it was Jericho who ensured I could reach your table without making a fool of myself." She reaches up to stroke the bird again, and Jericho leans into her touch with an air of satisfaction. "I will not slow you down, witcher. And I have a horse. Pennyroyal. He is in good health and also will not be cause for concern. I will, of course, pay my own way as is the custom."

"I leave in the morning, at dawn," Ghera says, finally, watching for any sign of reluctance in Jaskia's countenance.

"Well then," Jaskia says, picking up her ale and drinking the tankard dry before letting it fall with a thump to the table and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "In that case, I had better return to my music so the innkeeper can't accuse me of not earning my purse."

Ghera watches the bard stride back across the room wondering what in the names of all the gods who might be looking down upon them she's supposed to do next.


	4. Chapter 4

Ghera has no work lined up, no destination in mind, now that her vague plans have been so neatly routed by Jaskia's ambush. She no longer needs to travel to Ardonia where lodgings (and everything else) cost a pretty penny she cannot easily afford. Still, she is in no hurry to turn back north where winter still rages and travel would be cold, damp, and grueling. Perhaps they _should_ go north, so that she may test Jaskia’s mettle against the harshest conditions. The gruelling climb up a mountain pass in the midst of a blizzard would bring any fantasies that Jaskia might have about witchers' daily lives to an abrupt end. But Ghera acknowledges silently to herself, with the sun glinting low in the eastern sky, that she isn't strong enough to cut straight to what could be a killing blow.

Perhaps she’s earned a fantasy or two herself, after so many years.

So on that first morning she turns Roach south, toward the low country and the Ardonne coast where warm seas beckon. She hasn't been to the shore of the Oerna since -- She considers the question as they make their way along the well-graded and bustling thoroughfare. There had been the sea serpent perhaps five, six summers ago? Preying on the fishing communities of the Qinan'ti. Since then she has remained inland, moving from one job to another, mountains and valleys and farmland. The occasional volcanic lake or tumbling mountain river the largest bodies of water she has encountered in many a season. She wonders if Jaskia grew up near the sea, and realizes -- with a shake of her head at the oddity -- that she could turn to her left and simply ... ask. For so long, the woman riding beside her has been an idea, a promise, that Ghera carried _within_ her. The possibility of a future companion to be queried, argued with, listened to, worried for, protected.

Now Jaskia's here to represent herself.

There’s a knot of something hot and anxious and pleased lodged beneath Ghera's breastbone, making her more conscious than usual of breathing in and out, of her body rising and falling with Roach’s gait. It had kindled to life that morning when she descended from her room, just as the eastern skies were growing light, to find Jaskia already waiting. The bard had even managed to secure hot kaff for them, sweet with sugar and thick with cream and aromatic spices as they made it in the south.

"I didn't know how you preferred yours," Jaskia had said, apologetically, as she handed Ghera the second steaming cup. "But to be honest I think it was stretching things to get this and I didn't want to haggle. We have oatcakes, too, and dried fruit. I assumed you would want to leave immediately so I asked for them to be wrapped -- and she wouldn't accept payment?" That had been said with the lift of an eyebrow. "They are grateful to you, witcher."

"Ghera," Ghera had found herself correcting, slightly breathless.

“Ghera,” Jaskia had agreed, softly, smiling into her kaff.

* * *

Jaskia is smiling now, in the winter sunlight, as she rides beside Ghera, Jericho flying above them in slow circles. The bard has a good seat, and rides astride in breeches with an overskirt caught up at the waist. Her traveling cloak, like the rest of her clothing, is fine but serviceable cloth -- made to last rather than appeal to the latest taste in gentry fashion. It's a rather remarkable shade of emerald, warring with the rich topaz of Jaskia's skirt and the sky blue ribbon woven into and tying off the end of the single long braid that falls over her shoulder. She had said something the night before, a remark about splashes of color, and Ghera wonders if the bright garments are a personal indulgence. Beside the rich hues Ghera suddenly feels drab in shades of brown that must be difficult for Jaskia to pick out against the rolling farmlands they're riding through.

"Have you been in this part of Ardonne before?" Jaskia asks, perhaps feeling Ghera’s gaze on her. They haven't exchanged more than a few dozen words since setting out from the inn. Jaskia has spoken mostly with Jericho, unimpeded by the fact half of the dialog is croaks and caws, and said a few words here and there to Pennyroyal. She also seems to be working on a new composition, if the snatches of verse Ghera hears on the wind are any indication. But she hasn't spoken directly to Ghera since they left the stable yard. Yet the lack of engagement, Ghera realizes, hasn't felt obvious or strained. As if Jaskia understands that Ghera is unused to having companionship and is deliberately putting her at ease by not demanding conversation.

"Your visions haven't told you?" Ghera studies the clouds that have been gathering on the horizon and wonders if they will see rain before nightfall. She has oiled canvas for shelter but it will be scant to cover more than one. Perhaps a farmer will allow them space in the loft of a barn, and stable for the horses, at lower cost than a room above the local tavern. Though of course Jaskia may have her own expectations and coin to pay. She had made it clear the night before that she would cover her own expenses; had suggested this was the usual arrangement between witchers and bards. If this was a custom Ghera had been taught in the sisterhood she has long since forgotten; anyone she might ask is currently mountain ranges away from their current location. Would Ghera do Jaskia great insult if she could not afford to share the same roof? Ghera casts her mind back over the witchers and bards she has most recently encountered. They had seemed so easy together, so very close, it was hard to picture one staying the night at an inn while the other slept in a blanket roll on the edge of the village.

Ghera's muscles are already tense at the thought of Jaskia asleep somewhere Ghera would not hear if she cried out in alarm. She shifts unhappily in her saddle and frowns again at the sky.

"Now that _would_ be helpful, wouldn't it?" Jaskia huffs. "Visions that actually came with _useful_ information. Do you know how many years it took me to learn that the witcher I kept seeing in my dreams was you?"

Ghera assumes the question is a rhetorical one and merely _hmms_ in response.

"Exactly," Jaskia agrees. "The hair helped, you know. Not that many female witchers with hair so gold it could be mistaken for moonlight. But it still took me years of research in the records. I don't think the King's records keeper in Whiston-a-dale will ever forgive me for sending my sister-in-law to badger him. That's what finally turned up your name, you know, with a detailed enough description that I felt certain -- you're fondly remembered there."

A generation ago, Ghera had rescued the crown prince of Whiston-a-dale from an undesired match by helping him run off with a monk. It had been satisfying work for hire, well paid and with much less death than she was normally expected to bring to the job (she had only had to kill one unfortunate viper). As far as she had heard, in the years that followed, the prince -- who had eventually become king -- had returned home to the palace with the monk on his arm and the couple had become much beloved by their subjects. Whiston-a-dale was a small, but prosperous mountain city-state and she suddenly feels a pang of sadness that she never had cause to return to it while the prince and his lover still lived. It would be his niece, now, who held the throne.

"I’ve been to Ardonne before," she finally says, realizing that Jaskia is patiently waiting for words. "But I haven't been down this highway in many years. Do you know this part of the country well? We will need to find a place to stop for the night. I would ... welcome your suggestions." The words feel stiff and overly formal in her mouth.

"Mmm, not terribly well," Jaskia says. "I came by way of the road through Cabriz the day before yesterday and I haven't been through the Feljssen valley since I was a girl. Did you have it in mind to follow the Queen's Highway all the way to the sea?"

"Unless I -- we hear of work elsewhere," Ghera admits. "I had no other plan and the weather is temperate along the coast this time of year."

"There is -- might we stop at this wayside?" Jaskia brings Pennyroyal to a halt at a small turnout on the side of the rode, and dismounts. She’s already fumbling with one of her saddlebags as Ghera dismounts to join her, hands deftly feeling beneath the leather flap before pulling out a folded oil cloth that turns out to contain a leather bound folio. To Ghera's fascination, this turns out to be a series of maps that combine clear, dark markings with a raised design that allow Jaskia to trace out roads and landscape features, as well as words, by touch as well as sight as she turns through the pages, head bent low, searching for the right location.

"Ah, yes, as I remembered. Here." Jaskia stops to tap a finger against a page and moves back as Ghera steps over to look. Their shoulders brush against one another as together they look down at the map. A raised dot of black ink along the snaking red of the Queen's Highway sits against the green field of the Feljssen valley. The town of Tov, significant enough that the name rings a distant bell in Ghera's memory, but not so large they are likely to be overcharged for every meal. Though she realizes, with a start, that a bard likely commands a higher price the larger the audience; her habitual calculations of cost and benefit will need to be recalibrated.

"This is lovely craftsmanship," she says, after a moment of silence, brushing her fingertips over the embossed page. "You had this 'specially made?"

"There is a school, in Ardonia, for the blind," Jaskia replies. "I teach -- have taught -- there. Music. They have a printing house, and this is one of the volumes they offer. Expensive for an individual, but they offered me a special price. Well. I may have sweet-talked them into the offer." She lays a palm on the page, over the place where Ghera’s fingers have just passed over the ink. “I needed to have this. So that when the time came, I could make my way to you.”

* * *

They reach the outskirts of Tov just as a gentle rain, more a heavy mist, is beginning to fall. It darkens the gravel of the roadway and brings Jericho down from the sky to huddle on Jaskia's shoulder, beneath the hood of her cloak. Ghera begins looking for a suitable place to stop for the night and brings Roach to a halt before an inn along the final approach that looks modest but well kept -- likely more than she would have spent on herself, without work on offer, but not so much that one night will empty her purse.

A young human comes out from beneath the shelter of the open stable door. "Two horses, Witcher?"

"For the night. How much?"

"Six 'n two," the child says, taking the reins Ghera hands them and turning to accept the same from Jaskia. "Ma's inside, t'bar."

Taking this for the dismissal it is, Ghera turns toward the inn with Jaskia a few steps behind. The front room is dim even in contrast to the misty twilight and Ghera offers a hand to Jaskia thinking to keep her from stumbling on the rough floorboards. Jaskia accepts the offer with the tip of her head, pulling the hood of her cloak down from her hair to clear the shadows from around her face as she steps down from the entryway into the room proper. Her hand in Ghera's is warm from her riding gloves and the calluses on her fingers from the lute strings make her touches feel … specific. Hers, and no other's. Ghera shivers.

A woman with a worn kerchief over her hair comes out from a back room wiping her hands on her apron. "May I help you?"

"We seek lodging for the night," Ghera says.

"And I offer myself," Jaskia says, lifting her hand from Ghera's and reaching into her cloak as she sweeps forward. "As bard for the evening, if your establishment might benefit from my talents." She pulls a leather wallet from an inside pocket and offers it to the woman who accepts it and opens it; Jaskia's writ, Ghera realizes, from the guild.

"Bard Jaskia," the woman's eyes widen. "I never, ma'am." Then she looks over Jaskia's shoulder and her eyes widen further. "And Witcher Ghera? To what do we owe the pleasure, madams. Is this about the golem?"

Ghera steps forward. "Golem?"

"You hadn't heard?" The woman looks torn between disappointment at failing to have guessed their purpose and pleasure at being the one to tell the tale. "There've been reports. I only heard from the travellers through here from the south you understand, not seen it meself. But I hear tell it's been stealing goats and sheep, like, and folk haven't any idea who it might serve."

"We are _most_ interested," Jaskia said. "Witcher Ghera has defeated many golems, after all. Perhaps there might be some guests this evening we might ... interview?"

"Certainly!" The woman passes back the writ. "Oh goodness and I've kept you -- will it be one room or two? And shall I have Mari bring up hot water for a wash? We begin serving supper in just under an hour."

"One room will be sufficient," Ghera says, thinking of the coin in her purse.

"Please, yes, and hot water," Jaskia says. "I should like to wash before the evening. I usually play between six and ten with a quarter hour interval at the top of each hour. My terms are four, six with the basket passed at each half."

"Four, two." The woman counters.

"Four, four. And I accept in-kind payment through settlement of the bill in the morning."

"Done." Innkeeper and bard shake hands and Ghera wonders when she became superfluous to her own negotiation of a place to sleep for the night. She should be more bothered.

She should be bothered at all.

The room they are shown to, by a young woman who introduces herself as Mari, is spare and clean with whitewashed walls and a double-wide bed with a freshly stuffed mattress. The fire has been laid in the grate and Mari lights it for them before retreating to the kitchen for the promised wash water. Heavier footsteps pass her light tread on the stair, bringing a stable hand with their saddle bags.

Ghera unclasps her own cloak, heavy from the rain, and hangs it on a peg by the door, then kneels by her bags to check over her gear and determine if anything must be pulled out to dry. Anything for a task to focus on with Jaskia in the room, as Ghera is suddenly aware of the privacy of a shared sleeping space and the many stories _everyone_ knows about witchers and bards who travel together.

"I hope you don't mind that I took liberty, downstairs," Jaskia says from behind her. Ghera is aware of the soft sounds of her movements. "I can tell the price of the room concerns you. I should make it up, and more, tonight. Do you have an interest in the golem?"

"It could pay well," Ghera concedes. "Particularly if I am able to stop the creator." Golem often gave up such information readily if you were close enough to pay attention when you destroyed them. "But another witcher may take the contract before I have the chance."

"Does that often happen?"

Ghera looks up from her potion case. Jaskia is sitting on the bed unlacing her tall riding boots.

"Not everyone will hire a female witcher," she says. "Not at a fair price."

Jaskia _hmms_ in understanding.

Mari returns carrying a steaming pail of wash water and fills the basin on the wash stand. "Herself says supper will be served at the hour, ma'ams," she says, with a bob before departing again.

Ghera gestures toward the washstand to indicate Jaskia should take the clean water; she would be working that evening after all. Then she realizes that the gesture is probably not clear enough for Jaskia to understand from across the room and flushes.

"The water is yours," she says, clearing her throat.

"I shall do my best to be efficient," Jaskia says, turning her face toward Ghera. "My bags are there by the door, yes?"

"Yes."

"In the larger bag. Would you pass me the rolled leather kit? In the front compartment. Yes." She holds out a hand to accept the kit from Ghera, then turns toward the basin. Ghera goes back to her own work, trying not to think about the soft noises that mean Jaskia is stripping to the waist. That she's running the soft, damp chamois cloth over warm, exposed skin that Ghera definitely isn't picturing as she methodically sorts through her gear to ensure nothing is damaged.

"The rain is coming down harder now," Jaskia says, after they have shared the room in the quiet of mutual occupation for a time. There's a soft splash of the cloth in the basin. Ghera closes her eyes against the sound, as if she can stop her body from reacting. She and the bard have travelled less than a day in one another's company and Ghera has no right to imagine anything but a business partnership for the moment. "A rainy evening always brings people in for the fire, and the wine, and the music." Another soft _splosh_. "There. Might you help me, Ghera?"

"What?" Ghera turns on her knee at the unexpected question.

"My hair." Jaskia is pulling her shift back over her shoulders as she speaks, brown curls tumbling loose around her face. "I don't have time to wash it so re-braiding will have to do."

Ghera licks her lips to avoid saying anything as she pushes herself to her feet. Her own hair makes pleading ignorance impossible; she's been working battle plaits since she was a novice and could braid her own hair in her sleep.

"I'd do it myself, but I'm terribly left-handed," Jaskia shrugged, the linen of her shift clinging to still-damp skin. "Mine always turn out crooked. If you don't feel comfortable I can call for Mari to--"

"No, I--" Ghera wipes her palms on her thighs, moving across the room and pulling out a chair before the hearth. "Sit."

Jaskia sits.

Jaskia has a comb in her kit, polished mahogany with smooth teeth. Ghera pulls it through Jaskia's hair with long strokes, thinking of the women she did this for in the order, when they all lived together in the dormitory halls. Some had never completed their training. Some had died many years ago. Some, Ghera suspects, found ways to slip the harness of witcher duty and become ... something new. It has been decades since Ghera traveled with another, and longer since she has had a duty like this, to tend to someone in a way that wasn't urgent rescue or healing. Her hands feel clumsy, as if stiff from cold.

"Will it bother you if I sing _your_ songs this evening?" Jaskia asks, holding her body still and her head and neck straight but not stiff as Ghera works. " _Hmmmm_ that feels nice."

"I don't mind," Ghera says. Not a lie, exactly, though perhaps a partial truth. She has never enjoyed being the focus of most public attention, though it is an inevitable part of witcher work. She has grown accustomed to it. A manageable discomfort. What she realizes, as she puts the comb between her teeth and begins the braid at the crown of Jaskia's head, is that what she _minds_ is the thought of Jaskia sharing the songs with people other than her.

It's absurd, of course, because in order for Ghera to have heard them at all Jaskia has had to play them for others. Many times. But hearing them second, third, fourth hand or more had felt like a secret passed along in public. This feels ... Ghera shakes her head. She has no say, anyway, the work is Jaskia's to carry out as she pleases. "They are _your_ songs."

"They are _your_ stories." Jaskia echoes her inflection, though gently, not in mockery. "And I realize it must be strange to hear them told in words not of your own choosing." She puts a hand up to ghost down the braid taking shape. "Perfect."

Ghera weighs her words as she weaves soft hair down Jaskia's nape. "They are your visions. You have a right to them, as I have to my own dreams and memories."

"Pretty thoughts," Jaskia sighs. "But if my dreams invade your life? The right course of action, it seems to me, is far from clear."

Ghera shakes her head, knowing Jaskia cannot see her where she stands behind the chair. She cannot explain, even to herself, why the visions do not bother her more. Without words that feel right she stays silent, her fingers tucking in the final ends of Jaskia's curls and then a tap on Jaskia's shoulder for the ribbon to tie off the plait. Like the rest of Jaskia's wardrobe the ribbon is bright, the deep crimson of holly berries, and calls out the secret auburn highlights Jaskia's hair, glimpsed only in firelight.

Ghera lifts her hands away, resisting the urge to smooth her hands down Jaskia's shoulders. She hasn't been given permission to touch that way, and it's disconcerting that she has to stop herself, that her body responds to Jaskia with a familiarity their brief time together has given her no reason to claim. She steps back, away from the chair. "There."

Jaskia puts up a hand, light fingers dancing over the weave where Ghera's hands have just been. "Oh, yes, lovely, thank you. That's perfect." She stands and turns. Ghera slides her eyes away from where she can see the curves and shadows of Jaskia's body beneath her shift. "And I've kept you from the wash water. I'm so sorry. I am able to manage on my own from here. Please."

* * *

The tavern is already filling with travelers and locals when they descend from their room, loud and warm and full of the sound of people glad to be in from the cold, damp night. At Jaskia's request, Ghera assists her in navigating the tables and chairs to the front of the room where a chair has been placed on a low platform. Jericho flutters their wings and steps down from Jaskia's shoulder to the high back of the chair as Jaskia sits.

"May I bring you anything? Food or drink?"

" 'The care and keeping of a witcher's bard'? There's a song in that, I think." Jaskia smiles as she settles her lute in her lap with practiced ease. Ghera blushes. "I should like an ale very much. And I'll join you for a meal at my first break between sessions. Whatever they're serving this evening that's hot -- no shellfish. And bread." Again, Ghera has the absurd, aching urge to reach out and touch before departing. A kiss, even, placed softly against Jaskia's lips. It's been too long, she supposes, with a minute shake of her head, since she has been in the company of another. And so she finds herself making yet another strategic retreat, first to the bar for drink and food, and then to a table -- not in the shadows this time, but against a wall far from the warm fire, where she will escape notice by all but the most observant while she listens to the talk in the room and considers a great many things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaskia's atlas was informed by the examples in the [Touch This Page: Making Sense of the Ways We Read exhibition](https://www.touchthispage.com/) which explored the evolution of tactile type for low-vision and blind readers as well as universal design print which is accessible to both nonvisual and visual readers.


	5. Chapter 5

It isn't as if she’s been completely unprepared, Jaskia thinks, as Ghera's bright head retreats toward the bar at the far side of the room. Ghera's presence in her life has always been impossible to ignore: a tug at Jaskia's consciousness -- often, it seemed, on the outer edges of reality where _story_ began. Yet her _there_ ness is so much stronger in the room, in touching distance, in the space of shared air, of scent, of conversation, and the promise of a shared road ahead. Witchers and their bards: The stories and songs might embellish around the edges -- stories and songs always do -- but the core is an unfolding, tangible truth Jaskia feels down to her bones.

Ghera is _hers_.

She shivers with the knowledge, then turns to her work.

She begins with an instrumental tune, something familiar and cheering, to warm up her audience as she considers the best way to use the evening ahead. She has a chance to prove her usefulness. She's aware of having bullied her way into Ghera’s solitary life. Aware that most would see (have seen, year upon year) Jaskia’s presence as a burden. Since their meeting the night before, Ghera hasn’t expressed a single doubt -- verbal or otherwise -- about Jaskia’s fitness as a travel companion. Still. It won't hurt to underscore what Jaskia brings to the partnership. Ghera is anxious about expenses, so if Jaskia is able to earn a tidy sum tonight perhaps that will go some way to ease the tension between Ghera's shoulder blades. If she can facilitate a contract to end the golem, even better. A bit of patter at the break, while the basket makes its round, ballads with tales of heroism when people are just warm enough to loosen their tongues but have enough wit left to provide useful information ...

Yes, Jaskia thinks with satisfaction. She can set them up well for a successful taking.

For years, her mother had insisted Jaskia should do nothing to find the beautiful witcher who appeared in Jaskia’s night-time visions. _What would a powerful creature like that want of you?_ had alternated with _Witchers are all the same. She would take you from me, my darling._ Remembering her mother's complaints causes Jaskia to hit a sour note, though experience suggests only she and Jericho will have noticed. Her raven chirrups and resettles their feathers. 

"Your ale," Ghera's voice murmurs to her left, a soft announcement that takes care not to startle from beyond Jaskia's field of vision. "Where shall I put it for you?"

"The table beside me please," Jaskia says, beneath the notes, flushing slightly to know how the room will see them like this -- so unmistakeably together. Again, Jaskia's skin pickles with the knowledge that she is finally where she is somehow meant to be: in this room, on this journey, with this witcher. Surely Ghera feels it too. Jaskia thinks of the tremble of Ghera's fingers in her hair, even as her hands moved with confidence to pull Jaskia's unruly curls into alignment. She feels a similar tremble now, in the air between them, as Ghera hesitates.

"I will join you for supper," Jaskia says, absurdly feeling as though she reassures them both by saying so. 

Ghera hesitates a moment longer, then takes a step back, and pivots to step down off the low platform where Jaskia sits. Jaskia watches the halo of her hair retreat toward the far corner of the room, taking note of the direction for later. Jericho will help her find the way -- it helps that the raven likes shiny things and Ghera is one of the shiniest in the room. 

The tune Jaskia has been playing comes to an end and she transforms it into the beginning of another -- a song with lyrics this time, opening her mouth to begin with the first clear note.

> _In the dark time of the year_
> 
> _The witcher with the moongold hair ..._

The first vision had come to her when she was twelve, her eyesight beginning to dim around the edges, the daytime world closing in around her as the nighttime world expanded in ways she had insufficient words to describe. The first vision had been a terrifying, vivid nightmare: the dripping jaws of the afanc closing in, her arms shaking with fatigue yet somehow the knowledge of where to thrust the sword, how to roll before the body crushed her, the stench of the beast's blood, relief and sorrow at its death. Second sight is a strange thing, and Jaskia had learned over time that she was both observed and observer -- moving with Ghera yet also watching helplessly -- she would awaken aching from the phantom injuries of battle, hoarse from pleading with Ghera please -- _please_ \-- don't make me watch you die.

She wants to ask, yet has not yet had the courage: _Have you felt me there beside you?_ Ghera had been traveling toward her. Seeking. Was Jaskia anything like the bard she hoped to find?

She knows from experience how many songs make up a set, and when she has played them all and her cup is empty Jaskia sets her lute to one side and rises to her feet.

"Jericho." The raven flutters up from the back of the chair to settle on the leather rest over her shoulder, beak nudging at her cheek in subtle guidance.

"Yes. Take me to Ghera." She knows the direction, but Ghera’s glowing hair has been lost in the shifting light and shadow and chaotic of the crowded room. The raven nudges again. The room is boisterously noisy now: male and female voices, young and old. The air smells of the open fires in the greathearths, the sweat of unwashed bodies, of beer, of stew and fresh baked bread. Jaskia makes her way slowly and carefully toward the far corner where Ghera disappeared to and finds the witcher sitting at a small table alone, beneath the modest but steady glow of a low hanging chandelier, across from a chair kept waiting and a shepherd's pie.

"No shellfish." Ghera says, indicating the bowl with her own spoon.

"Thank you." Jaskia sits, Jericho fluttering up to rock playfully on the wrought-iron circle above them. They set the shadows around them swinging as the small lanterns sway on their hooks. Jaskia slides her hand over the smooth tabletop until she finds her spoon. "Have you learned anything about the golem?"

She feels Ghera shift across from her, perhaps a shrug, as she says: "A little. The last sighting was a day's journey south of here. It seems to be moving southeast toward the coast. No one here has seen or heard of another witcher hunting it."

"Will you wish to leave in the morning then?"

"Hmm."

Jaskia smiles. "I can be ready to leave the same time as we did this morning."

"We don't--" Ghera stops herself.

"Ah, but I think we do, isn't that right Jericho?" Jaskia tips her face toward Jericho who croaks and dips their head from above. She tears off a bit of bread and reaches up to give them a snack. "We cannot have gossips telling tales about how the witcher's new bard is slowing her down."

"You don't--" again Ghera cuts herself off.

"I will, you know," Jaskia sighs, in a tone she hopes is gentle but firm. Ghera needs to know this if they’re to work together. Keep company. Be … companions. "In order for your reputation not to suffer people will need to observe that I’m capable of following you into this life. I was told for years -- _decades_ \-- that this’ -- she gestures with her spoon, taking in their table, the room, the inn, their day spent on the road, the possible future they would share -- “would be impossible. There will be doubters.” She doesn’t allow herself to think, in that moment, that Ghera may be one of them. “I must prove them wrong before their doubt costs you work. Or does you greater harm."

" ‘Doubters’." Ghera repeats the word with a calm Jaskia can tell, a strange flutter deep in her belly, betrays how displeased she is at the idea of anyone questioning Jaskia's abilities.

"When my eyesight began to fade my parents were determined to find a cure." Jaskia can tell this story dispassionately now, in public, as if she is speaking of someone else. All she needs to do is focus on the facts rather than how it had felt at the time. How the world had changed shape around her. How she had felt the accumulating weight of her father's anger, her mother's resentment. The knowledge that her older brother -- and eventually his wife -- assumed she would someday live with them, a dependent. Ptori was a kind brother, and Shilly a sweet sister-by-law. But their household was a chaotic one, with the triplets underfoot, and they had never -- not in twenty years of tearful arguments and explanations -- truly understand Jaskia's need for independence. 

"My father was convinced his wealth and position could force a cure to materialize and my mother held me responsible for 'refusing' to be cured."

Ghera's critique of that was in the slight shift of her body. The toe of her boot grazes Jaskia's ankle beneath the table. A gentle touch. 

“I didn't _actually_ refuse.” Jaskia attempts, as she always does, to make light of a situation that had felt at the time as if it might crush her. “Contrary to my mother's boundless faith in my own stubborn willpower, twelve-year-old Jaskia wasn't actively complicit in the physical deterioration of her own vision."

"The healers...?"

"They were able to slow the degeneration," Jaskia says, gesturing to her face. "Several years ago a new tincture from Til-Phat was able to stabilize what was left of the vision in my right eye. With regular application they tell me that I may be able to maintain my current level of sight indefinitely."

She blinks, right eyelid closing and opening again over a field of vision that shows blurs of color and movement around them. Nevertheless, she can feel Ghera's attention focused on her. It’s like being in a vision, except that for all that they have felt so, _so_ real none have been as tangible as this. She feels her pulse in her throat and wills herself not to fill the silence with more speech.

"When did you know you would become a bard?" Ghera asks, finally.

"I've been making music since I was in the nursery. It wasn't until my father died that my brother arranged for academy schooling. I'd made it clear by then I wouldn't marry --" she stumbles too close to the truth, which is ... _wouldn't marry any but you_. She hasn't told anyone that particular truth, and won't, unless one day she finds enough courage to share it with Ghera herself. "-- and there was a need for me to make my own way."

“Hmm.” Whatever that particular _hmm_ means, Jaskia’s response appears to have satisfied Ghera’s curiosity for the moment and she allows Jaskia to finish her supper in companionable silence after that -- though Jaskia can feel her thoughts unspoken in the air between them, perhaps not quite ready to take the shape of words. Which, she supposes with an inward sigh, is good, because Jaskia needs to return to work. She finishes her stew and Jericho flutters down for the last crumbs of bread.

She's eaten more from necessity than hunger today, her stomach a strange, tight knot of anxiety at the unknown path before them even as the rest of her body and mind feels like a sea of calm certainty. This is the only possible path left for her to take -- Jaskia, the bard who has no real home. Who has resigned her teaching post. Who has given up her rented rooms. The bard who had always been too willful to get on easy with those she answered to, the blind woman with visions that were of no use to anyone in positions of power. Her skill with lute and voice will earn her way, but not a great deal more. And she doesn’t want to face Ptori and Shilly having failed.

She wants to be with Ghera.

She can feel the attention of the room on them. Some drinking here tonight had seen them enter together. More had been here when Ghera brought her drink. Now they have dining together and the room is _aware_. 

"Would you like an escort back to your instrument, Bard Jaskia?" Ghera asks, formally and a little louder than necessary, perhaps also feeling that they have an audience, as Jaskia rises to her feet. Jericho grumbles as they side-step up Jaskia’s arm to their favored perch on her shoulder.

"Much appreciated, Witcher Ghera," Jaskia says, lifting a hand for Ghera to take. If Ghera judges it a moment to perform formality, for public reasons or for personal ones, Jaskia is willing to follow her lead. They move smoothly through the room, Ghera guiding Jaskia with confidence through the chairs and tables without making her feel she’s being _steered_.

She takes her seat and settles herself, pausing to re-tune her instrument as Ghera returns to their seat and Jericho flies up to investigate the exposed beams in the shadows above. Jaskia has several songs at the forefront of her mind as candidates for the opening song of the set and she plays a few bars of each beneath the voices of the tavern patrons. Her fingers choose for her, continuing with the third song beyond the opening phrases and into the first lines of music that accompany her lyrics. The first song she ever wrote for Ghera, not long after she began her formal musical training. It had been derivative, but a crowd pleaser, and entirely honest in both sentiment and deed. Someone in the far corner of the room by the bar recognizes the opening notes and hollers their appreciation. There’s a smattering of applause.

Jaskia smiles, triumphant, and bends to her work.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll note this chapter has kicked the rating up to Explicit. Back when I was drafting this I asked my wife if sex on the second night was too soon n/n? and she was like nope! so they did.

Hours later, they settle to sleep on opposite sides of the single bed. It's wide enough for two grown people, though a bit on the short side (as they all are) for a witcher. Unable to angle herself across the bed, Ghera must lay on her side with her knees pulled up, to fit without her feet hanging off or head bumping the headboard. The layout of the room is not ideal because the door is on one side of the bed and the window on the other. She settles for putting herself between Jaskia and the door while facing the window. Not that they have any reason to expect trouble but Ghera isn't used to having anyone apart from herself to look out for in the night. She slides a knife beneath her pillow, just in case, and hopes Jaskia won’t notice.

"Is that a _knife_ you just slid under your pillow?" Jaskia should not sound so amused.

Ghera huffs in embarrassed annoyance.

"I should warn you, sometimes I talk in my sleep. Will a sudden noise in the night result in a knife between my ribs?" Is Jaskia _teasing_ her? 

"It's much more efficient to go under the ribcage, and up," Ghera moves her hand in demonstration before remembering Jaskia will not be able to see the motion in the dark. "Have you not been taught to handle a weapon? I will show you in the morning. But no, you have nothing to fear from me."

"Good." Jaskia smiles and lifts her hand in an abbreviated gesture, as if she is reaching to touch Ghera's face, then pulls back. Ghera feels the sharp, ghosting pain of disappointment.

"I never have, you know," Jaskia says, into the dark. 

It’s been several minutes since she last spoke. Unsure whether they are done speaking (unsure whether she _wants_ to be done speaking, but with no words to break the silence) Ghera has lain awake listening to the shifting coals banked in the hearth, to the settling bones of the inn as the guests and inhabitants turn in for the night, to the rain falling heavy against the window panes, to Jaskia breathing beside her. 

Earlier, as they prepared for bed, Ghera had been aware of (while not exactly _watching_ ; she hasn’t been invited to _look_ ) Jaskia undressing as they prepared for bed. At the corner of her vision she had felt more than seen Jaskia stripping away her brightly-colored outer layers and setting them aside, carefully folded for the following morning’s use. Then she had felt Jaskia then slide beneath the bedclothes in a shift and shawl, neither garment an adequate barrier between Ghera and her thoughts about Jaskia's warm skin, her nipples pulled tight at the chill of the night air, the shadowy suggestion of dusky curls beneath the linen shift just at the join where hip met thigh. 

Now, she’s aware of Jaskia on her back, with her face turned toward Ghera in the dark, a hand uncurled against the pillow between them. 

"I’ve never been afraid of you," Jaskia clarifies. It seems she has taken Ghera's continued silence for confusion. Perhaps she _is_ confused. She doesn't have words for what she feels, if that's what confusion means. This woman sharing her bed is a stranger ... yet also not a stranger. It's as if they have known one another far longer than a single day of travel, barely a single revolution of the earth. 

"Oh," she finally whispers into the night, for lack of any other words. 

"I am sorry," Jaskia says, at last, after another long pause. "For being so late."

"Late?" Ghera frowns, thinking it is barely past the midnight hour; they will rise at dawn, as she most often does, and have a long day's travel before them, but she has traveled on much less sleep. Nothing to apologize for. Her body, after all, has been made to endure much worse.

This time Jaskia's hand does find Ghera's cheek, long fingers curved against her jaw, thumb just a ghosting touch at the corner of her lip. Ghera feels the heat as Jaskia shifts closer beneath the bedclothes. "I was born late, you know," Jaskia murmurs. "Five weeks after the midwife predicted, and my mother never let me forget it. Never spoke a word until the age of three, and didn't read until age ten. My blood didn't begin until I was nearly seventeen. I began at the academy long after all the others -- I only earned an apprenticeship because I stayed at every school holiday for extra lessons. They almost refused to place me because I was 'too old.' I had to appeal to the guild. Twice. And then --"

Ghera waits again in the dark, listening to Jaskia's breath, holding her own, and feeling the heat and strength of that hand, however light the touch, where it rests upon her cheek. A hand that may never have held a killing blade; a hand that is alive with stories. 

"It was hard. Letting myself believe you might ..." Jaskia stops again. "But you do." They breathe together, curled toward one another in the bed that had felt big enough for two independent bodies just a handful of minutes ago, but now feels much smaller. Not cramped, but as if they are enfolded together by the promise of whatever has kindled between them. Ghera puts her own hand up, hesitantly, to trace a finger around Jaskia's wrist bones. Her wrists are small. Fine enough that Ghera can encircle one between thumb and forefinger, which she does before running her thumb up the inside of Jaskia's arm to her elbow. She listens to Jaskia's sounds: a different sort of inhale this time. 

"In your song about the jotun. The one I fought in Trisk'un," Ghera says, pulling her hand back up the length of Jaskia's arm and then pushing it down again. Listening to Jaskia's heartbeat and her own dance together. Hopeful. They ought to be sleeping: sated by the rich meal, wearied by the long day. But here they are, awake and talking. Murmuring together in the companionable darkness that reminds her of nothing so much as the novitiates’ dormitory after the evening bell. "There is a note. It touches here." Ghera pulls Jaskia's hand down from her cheek to the place in her breast that aches whenever she hears the music. "You have been speaking to me with your music," she tries to explain, frustrated with words and their limits. 

Jaskia's fingers flex under Ghera's palm, clutching at the linen of Ghera's shift as if to pull her closer. Ghera hears the soft, wet sound of Jaskia's mouth opening and closing again as she licks her lips preparatory to speaking. 

When she does, it's a soft question: "You heard me?" 

"I did not always know that it was you," Ghera murmurs in apology, sliding her hand forward again along the warmth of Jaskia's arm. This time she doesn't stop at Jaskia's elbow but continues all the way to the curve of her shoulder, sliding her palm flat against the plane of Jaskia's shoulder blade. She takes care to keep her movements light, questioning. She reminds herself to pull away at the slightest sign that Jaskia might not welcome the touch. But she doesn't scent fear, only arousal, with a taste of something deeper that pulls her closer, closer, _closer_. 

"Sometimes,” she whispers, feeling hopeful. “I am also late." 

"You were searching for me," Jaskia says, voice whisper-quiet and close enough that Ghera feels the movement of her lips. “ It is a statement, not a question, so Ghera doesn't answer in words. She slides the hand on Jaskia's shoulder downward, pulling Jaskia's hips closer to her own. “When I found you.” Jaskia accepts the wordless invitation and pushes with a knee for entry between Ghera's thighs, rocking them together with a sharp inhale that swallows the final syllable _you_. 

They still haven't kissed, which is a shame, and Ghera leans across the remaining space between her mouth and Jaskia's. 

"Should I --" Jaskia asks, gratifyingly breathless as she meets Ghera's lips, "-- be concerned -- about -- taking advantage?" She can't be too concerned, Ghera thinks, smiling against that eager mouth, because she’s already working a hand between them, up against the rise of Ghera's breast, rolling the nipple just hard enough between thumb and forefinger. Ghera pushes into the touch, encouraging _more_ and _harder_. 

"No," she manages, between one kiss and the next, her voice a queer mix of rough and soft to her own ears. 

Jaskia laughs, softly, and doesn’t stop. 

It’s a beautiful laugh: deep and knowing and honest. Ghera isn't sure if she’s ever, in her long life, inspired such a laugh. Certainly not to her memory. Certainly not in a situation like this. As a reward she drags her lips down from Jaskia's mouth across her jaw to her throat, which Jaskia bares easily, tipping her head back against the pillows and pulling Ghera toward her by the front of her shift, then a hand at the back of her neck, buried in her hair. _Yes._

Jaskia smells good, a scent that clears Ghera's head even as it calls up long-dormant desire. She wants this woman, in a way she cannot remember wanting in a long time. She smooths her palm down Jaskia's body again, shoulder to hip, then pushes her hand up under Jaskia's shift in a reverse sweep of her palm, only this time with no cloth between them. _Yes._

"You don't need -- this. To give this. To stay." Ghera forces her hands to still, pulls back even as Jaskia makes small, argumentative noises at the retreat of Ghera's mouth. "I would not demand --"

"Please," Jaskia says, panting, sure. "I've wanted you for as long as I've known to want." Her fingers clench in the hair at the back of Ghera's skull. "And what of you? I want,” another panting breathe, another clench of fingers, “but will not demand, not now or ever --"

"Yes," Ghera says. "You are _here_ , remember?" She pulls the hand Jaskia has curled between them toward her and kisses the knuckles, then flattens it to her chest. "Here. Already.”

Ghera’s last lover had been another witcher; they had traveled together for a season before parting ways amicably. It had been a temporary, companionable physical intimacy that assuaged the mutually-acknowledged loneliness of their vocation. That had been ... years ago. Since then her own hand has sufficed when her body needed release. 

This, though, is something altogether different.

She rolls onto her back, using her own weight to pull Jaskia forward. For a few moments they are a tangle of limbs and underclothes, mouths warm and hungry with kisses. Jaskia makes soft grunting sounds of pleasure and need, tugging at Ghera's shift in the dark, seeking skin. " _Please_ \--"

Ghera sits up, lifting them both, moving Jaskia astride her lap where -- goddess, all that slick heat -- opens soft and vulnerable over and against Ghera's own coarse curls. She finds the hem of Jaskia's shift and pulls it off to toss aside. Jaskia's breasts are full, the nipples as tight as her own, and Jaskia whines with satisfaction when Ghera takes the first into her mouth, curling her tongue around the nub. One of Jaskia's hands is still tangled in Ghera's hair, gripping hard for balance, the other she uses to fumble for Ghera's hand and push it in a wordless but unmistakable demand between her legs. 

Between Jaskia's thighs are curls that Ghera hopes to see in daylight upon the 'morrow. For now she feels them, at once coarse and soft, caught between her fingers, slick with arousal, everything warm, heavy, full, as Ghera presses forward, acquainting herself with the feel of Jaskia both pliant and possessive -- _my witcher_ her body seems, miraculously, inexplicably, to be saying with every tug of her fingers, every nip of teeth against lip, every wanting sound that follows as Ghera finds the place within her folds where fingers can push deeper still. _Mine_. 

They find a stuttering rhythm in the dark, surrounded by the sounds of breathe -- inhale, catch, release -- and flesh colliding, the creak of the bed, the rustle of hay crushed beneath them. Ghera shifts her hips to better support Jaskia's thighs, then realises the movement has brought the back of her wrist flush between their bodies and hard against her aching clit. _That's right_ , Jaskia murmurs, barely audible, mere vibrations against Ghera's skin as she pulls Ghera's shift up over her head and bends to tend her aching nipples. _That's my love._

No one has ever said _love_ to Ghera, not once in all her years. And now that word, from those lips, against her own body. Somehow it's that -- the words or the feeling of the words pressed into her flesh, that precipitates the cresting wave; a sudden lurch of acute pleasure-pain that takes her by surprise -- and when has she, a witcher last been surprised by any act of her own body? -- pulling her in with a sharp cut-off cry to press her forehead against Jaskia's shoulder and dig her free hand into the flesh of Jaskia's hip so hard she knows even as she does so Jaskia will bruise. But she needs to hold on, and not just deep inside, where the two of them are fused together, and she feels Jaskia clenching around her even as her own body shakes through release. 

"Fuck," she says, through gritted teeth, almost angry at how good it feels.

Jaskia laughs again, forehead pressed to Ghera's temple, breath hot against her cheek. "By all means, my love, my witcher," she murmurs. "As often as you like." 

"...shouldn't’ve," Ghera tries, still not sure of her mouth forming words or of her scattered wits. It isn't right that she should have come already. It's confusing. She doesn't, usually. So quickly, so hard. Often she doesn't at all -- unable, with someone else (with danger) in the room. That her body doesn't register Jaskia as a threat is a ... revelation that she pushes aside for later. She can't think about it now, with Jaskia's soft warmth in her lap, against her front, full breasts pushing against Ghera’s own, body pushing her back against the bed, toppling them back to the mattress as Jaskia takes what she wants from the thrust and slide of Ghera's fingers against her folds, pulled inside by powerful muscles that cause Ghera's after-tremors of pleasure to shiver beneath her skin, burning at the way Jaskia is using her. 

Jaskia arches up and one of her breasts swings within reach so Ghera lifts her head to pull it in and suckle with lips and tongue and teeth. Jaskia pants, then groans above her, sliding their bodies together, twisting in search of a particular angle, stuttering against Ghera's hand again, then again. Ghera still feels raw from her own climax but welcomes the almost-too-much sensations of pressure and drag -- pleasure, not pain -- the way Jaskia handles her almost roughly. Demanding. Giving no sign of fear that a witcher could overpower a mere human (and she could, but won't, never would). 

" _Please_ ," she begs, not exactly sure what she's pleading for except for Jaskia to take what she needs. Which she does, hot damp forehead pressed to Ghera's shoulder and hands twisted in the bedclothes as she clutches and shudders around Ghera's fingers until she finally falls, still and spent, across her chest.

In the sated quiet that follows, Ghera fumbles the sheet and quilts back over them before the sweat of exertion can cause Jaskia to catch cold. Jaskia murmurs wordless, sleepy thanks against Ghera's neck and nuzzles in against Ghera with her entire body: flushed skin against flushed skin, curve against curve, no hint of space between them. Ghera still slips an arm around Jaskia’s shoulders and pulls her closer still. 

And with Jaskia safe in her arms (or is it Ghera safe is Jaskia's?) the witcher and her bard fall, at last, to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song [The Dimming of the Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimming_of_the_Day) by Richard and Linda Thompson (1975).


End file.
